Spaced Out : Enforcer’s Tickets Keep Handicap-Only Parking Free and Clear

You pull into the mall parking lot and an empty space catches your eye. But it’s for handicapped people only, and you drive to the back of the lot.

Then a strapping fellow in Olympic health takes the handicap parking spot and dashes into the mall. It really burns you.

It burns Irwin Morrison too. But he can do something about it.

Morrison can put slips of paper on windshields, notifying drivers that they owe the state of California $52.

Morrison is a special officer for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. His sole responsibility is handicap-parking enforcement.

He roams the south county from Lake Forest to the San Clemente line in an unmarked car--100 miles a day--to catch people who have parked illegally in spaces reserved for the handicapped. And he loves it.

“I think it’s a good law; I don’t mind it a bit when I can catch someone,” Morrison said.

The Department of Motor Vehicles issues special license plates or blue dashboard placards to the handicapped. These let police and store owners know that the driver is authorized to use handicap-parking spaces.

The Orange County Board of Supervisors set up the one-man enforcement program about a year ago and are talking about adding another officer and expanding the territory.

10 Tickets a Day

Morrison issues about 10 tickets a day. Most are for $52; some are $30 fines for cars blocking access ramps.

Sheriff’s officials figure that it takes four tickets a day to pay Morrison’s salary and expenses and other costs of running the program. Any tickets he issues after that are gravy. In the first seven months of this year, he issued $70,000 worth of tickets.

Morrison, who took the job this year, doesn’t work on quotas. But he has never failed to ticket at least four vehicles. His record for one day is 17. And he has heard it all.

“The drivers are never wrong. It’s always the officer’s fault for catching them,” Morrison said. “It’s always, ‘I was just going to be two minutes. Why get me?’ ”

The worst offenders are not at shopping malls or grocery stores, but at hospitals, Morrison said.

“Parents come in with a child with a broken arm. They figure that qualifies as a handicap, so they park in handicap parking,” he said. “But that’s not the law.”

Morrison has learned a few things. For example, more violations occur when it rains.

Most people pay the fines, and Morrison has had to go to court only six times. Each time, the traffic commissioner found the drivers guilty but suspended fines in all six cases.

That rankled Morrison only once. One day after he ticketed a man, the man’s wife parked in the same spot in the same car. Both made excuses to the court and got out of paying the fine.

Morrison’s boss, Sheriff’s Lt. David Mann, said finding as many violators as possible isn’t the goal.

“The idea is to keep these spots free for the people who really need them,” Mann said.

Margeta Jorgenson, president of the Orange County chapter of the state Assn. of the Physically Handicapped, insisted that handicapped people aren’t looking for special privileges, just a place to park.

Jorgenson, herself handicapped, said parking poses two problems: If she has to park far away, other drivers backing out might not see her in her wheelchair. And in regular spots, there isn’t enough room to get her wheelchair out of the car.

“Misuse of the handicap-parking spaces is still a serious problem,” she said. “Whenever I leave home, I still have to be concerned whether I’m going to find parking.”

Morrison is not the only officer handing out such tickets in Orange County. Several cities boast rigid handicap-parking enforcement, but they use traffic patrol officers and then often just in response to complaints.

Signs Must Conform

Huntington Beach, which state rehabilitation officials say has a good record for enforcement, does have one problem, said Karen Peterson, Police Department parking control supervisor. Too many businesses put up handicap-parking signs that don’t meet state qualifications.

State law requires an emblem with a wheelchair on a blue background, either on the parking spot or an adjacent sign. Parking spots that say “handicap parking only” don’t meet the requirement, she said. Nor do signs with the wheelchair emblem but no blue background, or spots with no blue borders. Police can’t issue tickets when the signs are improper, she said.

“The best we can do is inform the complainant about it,” she said.

Another problem, Morrison said, is the driver who has a handicap-parking sign in the car because a family member who is not with them is handicapped. That is illegal, but difficult to enforce when the drivers claim that the relative is inside a store.

Ticketed Whenever Possible

But those people are ticketed whenever possible.

“We’ve seen a car with a handicap placard parked in a handicap spot, then three guys with surfboards get out,” she said. “You can bet we’re going to cite them.”

Morrison, 49, a retired Marine captain, isn’t always hard-nosed. Sometimes, he said, he gives people a break by telling them to move on when he sees them pull into a spot.

And he has learned not to argue.

“They start telling me how wrong I am to give them a ticket,” he said. “I just smile, tell them to have a good day, and move on.”